Wednesday, September 23, 2009

CN's Kingston Industrial Spur, Part 2

The west end of CN's Industrial Spur in Kingston included track KM54. This track led to a partly-covered door-level platform at Weldwood lumber. In 1980, PGE 5344 and BCOL 5258 were being unloaded.

In 1981, BCOL 40025, in the newer darker-green scheme, built 10-71 was at Weldwood:

Other boxcars spotted at Weldwood: CN 592508, 568638, 567039, CP 290443 and BCOL 4943 and 40879. Passing by aboard VIA in June, 1982 two CN double-door boxcars were spotted at weldwood. After the Industrial Spur crossed Gardiners Road, it curved away from CN's Kingston Sub double track and led to the Northern Telecom phone cable plant. In this aerial view, the spur can be seen just below the parking lot, as it dog-legs back into the plant property:

At Northern, there was a car storage/runaround track KM51, and unloading tracks KM52 and KM53. Covered hoppers of polypropylene and polyethylene pellets for wire insulation arrived from Hercules in Montreal and C-I-L in Edmonton and Sarnia. In September 2000, 4118 and 4115 were pushing cars into the plant property. The plant closed in 2003. In 2014, the 500,000 sq ft plant was purchased by Kingston's Taggart Construction, for demolition. Originally listed for $4.1 million, a court-ordered sale for $2.5 million was the final result.

In June 2000, NCLX (ex-DOCX) 44608 was off-spot for the plant, in front of the DuPont warehouse shown in Part 1:

In 1981, DOCX 44627 Sclair and ACFX 56634 Hercules were also off-spot, at the Cataraqui Spur team track KM02:

A CN covered hopper was being lifted from the team track by the local in 1981:

In July 1980, 40-foot CN boxcars 424187-421888-427196-421150 are on the team track, being loaded with hay for Manitoba farmers:

The team track was also a handy place for CN to store work equipment. Burro crane 50408, gondola 148878 and caboose 79295 were sitting still for the weekend in November, 1980:

Brooks Scanlon of Redmond, Oregon double-door boxcar USLX 17009 was spotted in 1980. The KEC Lumber rep arrived with tape measure to measure the shipment of lumber. Note the load-restraining devices behind the opened plug door:

When the Cataraqui Spur was realigned and team track KM02 relocated east of Gardiners Road, KEC Lumber unloaded its lumber shipments there, as from flatcar CP 315687 in 1985:

Tank cars of asphalt from Ashwarren asphalt in Millhaven were spotted on the new team track in March, 2004. Imagine hearing two Geeps pushing several of these loaded cars up the hill on the Cat Spur into the team track. The asphalt was heated, unloaded and trucked west to Millhaven, where a two-track unloading facility has since been built.

CN also found the new team track useful for tucking away work equipment after a day's work. Newly-arrived track gang equipment is here on several flat cars in December, 1994:

CN crane 50483 and accompanying gondolas were spotted here while working along the Kingston Sub picking up scrap rail in June, 2003:

Running extra...

Noticed all those annoying modern advertising slogans with loads of periods in them? Like Wal-Mart: Save Money. Live Better. Sears: Good Life. Great Price. Imagine if this scourge had struck years earlier? Pennsylvania Railroad: Standard. Railroad Of the World. CB&Q: Way. Of the Zephyrs. And CN: Serves All. Canada.

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Blog partner Steve Boyko has been a one-man Winnipeg wrecking crew, putting out a plethora of posts including photos and video of the local rail scene there. His blog, Confessions of a Train Geek is consistently the most-updated on the Trackside Treasure blog roll.

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Evening TV in the past week has included an affable Barack Obama on Late Night with David Letterman, as well as the bizarre Kanye West-Taylor Swift un-acceptance speech. Tonight it was jolly Michael Moore's turn on Larry King Live, plugging his new movie on capitalism. In all this, the new series Glee has emerged irreverent and not taking itself at all seriously.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Hey Eric,

Another great post. Loading hay into boxcars...imagine that. The aerial shot of Nordex is pretty cool too. Nice to see it as a working industry full of phone cable instead of a big empty concrete field.

I have a question about the team track KM02. You mention that it was realigned to its present location on the east side of Gardiners. How did it work before that? I know that CN owns the land on the west side of Gardiners, and I guessed from its partitioning that the tracks (Cataraqui Spur) used to branch off of the south side of the Kingston sub and go across Gardiners Rd. to the present KM0X location. Was there a bridge over Gardiners Rd, or a crossing for the Spur, or what?

I also noticed that your track diagram includes crossovers both east and west of the spurs, and a "runaround" option on the Industrial Spur. I don't remember them...I guess they were removed sometime in the 90ies?

Hi Bryan, sounds like your questions are answered. I only remember the crossover west of the DuPont warehouse. The Cat Spur crossing of Gardiners Road wouldn't have been as much of a traffic headache as the Kingston Sub busy double-track mainline crossing. 3741 is crossing Gardiners Road in the first photo of Part 1 of the Cat Spur; there are two cars visible north of the crossing under the billboards. The crossbuck is barely visible south of the crossing. Thanks for stopping by,Eric

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Rather Sketchy Profile

Eric Gagnon was born in Montreal, Quebec and has lived in Kingston, Ontario most of his life. Much time was spent trackside when not in school, college or practising as a medical laboratory technologist. Married with two children, Eric is also an HO-scale modeller, musician, avid reader and blogger, having launched his Canadian railfan blog Trackside Treasure in 2008. Eric's first book Trackside with VIA:The First 35 Years, published in 2011, was followed by two more in 2012: Trackside with VIA:Cross-Canada Compendium and Consist Companion. In 2017, Eric published his fourth book, Trackside with VIA - Research & Recollections. Eric's books can be found in museum gift shops, hobby shops and in the hands of VIA Rail enthusiasts across Canada, the United States and worldwide.

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